Tag: fallout

Stopping

~ e.v. ~ 1 Comment

My running isn’t going very well at the moment. This is partly because of the virus I had a few weeks ago (COVID?) and partly because of the coaching. The virus sapped my energy levels, which is fine, but I feel, ironically, that the coaching is intefering with rebuilding because there is such a focus on strength work that it’s leaving me with too little energy for running. The outcome is that I seem to be paying to add kilograms to my deadlift, which isn’t that exciting and not something I’d really put a monetary value on, if I’m honest. So I feel like we’ve lost the plot a bit. Last week I felt really down some days, possibly from the virus, possibly from fatigue, and thought about it a lot, and… I’ve mentally checked out from it now. Before my next session I will email her and let her know I won’t be continuing with it past the current month, but to be honest if we could just stop right now I’d be happy. It feels like when you give notice in a job and suddenly it seems completely pointless.

In gaming news… I did get bored of Mad Max after all. I went back to Fallout 4 but I struggled to be interested in that too. It just seems very mediocre. In the end I went with Wolfenstein: The New Order, which I must have got free a long time ago but never played. I had low expectations but they were completely surpassed – this game is great! It has you go from breaking out of a hospital to breaking in and out of a concentration camp to stealing nazi helicopters then stealing a nazi nuclear submarine and then infiltrating a nazi moon base to steal the nuclear warhead encryption keys. All in a day’s work for Captain Blazkowicz. But it’s well written despite being kind of stupid and doesn’t take itself seriously at all. I really liked Frau Engel, the seondary villain.

I enjoyed it so much that I bought a pack of three other Wolfenstein games. I have now started the next one (The New Colossus) and one of the more unusual things is that you can overhear some of the nazi enemies talking about the events of the first game and discussing how they found it traumatic to be hiding from the American lunatic with the laser rifle while he slaughtered their friends and that they still have nightmares from it. Err, sorry 🤷‍♀️

Decking

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

I am enjoying my Steam Deck, actually a lot more than I expected. I suppose I expected to think it was neat but not really know what to do with it. And that was so for a while, but then I installed Fallout New Vegas on it and it just clicked. It’s fun. I installed lots of mods to make it a more varied experience than when I last played it (10+ years ago) and I’m enjoying it, but it’s very hard now.

I hadn’t realised this but the Deck has a gyroscopic sensor in it, and you can configure it to act as a mouse movement. What that means is you can be in first person view, hold down the left button to activate it, then spin around and it rotates the camera as if your character is also spinning around. It’s a bit gimmicky but it impressed me. You can also use it for fine aiming. Aiming in general is done with the right touchpad, which you control with your thumb. I found it very hard to use initially but after some practice it feels a bit more natural. It’s nowhere near as easy as using a mouse though, which is one reason the game is so hard.

In totally unrelated news I need to fill out a tax return this year. I made a small amount of extra income last tax year and should legally declare it. …All I can say is I wonder how much tax intake HMRC loses to people who should be declaring side income but don’t want to deal with the hassle of it and the silly test of “we know what these numbers are, but we want to make sure you’re going to put them in right”. There should just be a field saying “I made a bit of extra money on top of all the stuff you already know about, let me just put the number in here and adjust my tax code for next year thanks”. It’s not like they are opposed to fiddling about with my tax code, they do it an average of twice per year for the last few years. I know because I’ve just gone through all the paperwork!